Re: Probability of Article Replacement?

Quoting Nik Taylor <yonjuuni@...>:

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > "zd" was a slip of mind - I meant to write _hadz_, _hadzen_.
> >
> > I assume "it seems reasonable" applies to the entire development I
> sketched,
> > not only the derivation of _hadz_, _-en_?
>
> Right.  "This one man" -> "the man" seems quite plausible.  Altho,
> "these many men" seems a little odd to me (unless "many" was the
> normal
> way of indicating plural?).
Eh, the development is supposed to be "this man">"the man", and "this one
man">"this man".

After some more thought, the easiest thing to do with the plural would be having
the independent pl demonstrative pronoun _han_ be used also with a noun. So _ha
tseken_ would change meaning from "these people" to "the people", with _han
tseken_ as the new from for "these people". I'd give a weird sg/pl pair
_hadz_/_han_, but a bit of irregularity is just spice.

>  Perhaps the -en was just from analogy
> with
> other plural adjectives?  Did the obsolete article have a
> singular/plural distinction?
It didn't.

                                                              Andreas